About Charles Yu: Charles Yu is an Asian American writer. He is the author of the novel How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe and the short story collections Third Class Superhero and Sorry Please Thank You.
This is what I say: I've got good news and bad news. The good news is, you don't have to worry, you can't change the past. The bad news is, you don't have to worry, no matter how hard you try, you can't change the past. The universe just doesn't put ...
Desire is suffering. A simple equation, and a nice catchphrase. But flipped around, it is more troubling: suffering is desire.
If I could be half the person my dog is, I'd be twice the human I am.
...unfortunately, it's true: time does heal. It will do so whether you like it or not, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. If you're not careful, time will take away everything that ever hurt you, everything you have ever lost, and replace it...
Look at that," he said. "How the ink bleeds." He loved the way it looked, to write on a thick pillow of the pad, the way the thicker width of paper underneath was softer and allowed for a more cushiony interface between pen and surface, which meant m...
There must be some kind of internal time distortion effect in here, because when I look at myself in the little mirror above my sink, what I see is my father's face, my face turning into his. I am beginning to feel how the man looked, especially how ...
You want to tell a story? Grow a heart. Grow two. Now, with the second heart, smash the first one into bits.
You want to tell a story? Grow a heart. Grow two. Now, with the second heart, smash the first one into bits. Gross, right? A bloody pulpy liquid mess. Look at it, try to make sense of it. Realize you can't. Because there is no sense. Ask your compute...
Within a science fictional space, memory and regret are, when taken together, the set of necessary and sufficient elements required to produce a time machine.
Worry was my mother's mechanic, her mechanism for engaging with the machinery of living. Worry was an anchor for her, a hook, something to clutch on to in the world. Worry was a box to live inside of, worry a mechanism for evading the present, for re...
nostalgia, underlying cosmological explanation for Weak but detectable interaction between two neighboring universes that are otherwise not causally connected. Manifests itself in humans as a feeling of missing a place one has never been, a place ver...
If you ever find yourself coming out of a time machine, run. Run away as fast you can. Don't stop. Don't try to talk. Nothing good can come out of it." narrator Charles Yu, not author Charles Yu p19
Time isn't an orderly stream. Time isn't a placid lake recording each of our ripples. Time is viscous. Time is a massive flow. It is a self-healing substance, which is to say, almost everything will be lost. We're too slight, to inconsequntial, despi...
When you are thirteen, you spend all your time imagining what it would be like to live in a world where you could pay a robot for sex. And that sex would cost a dollar. And the only obstacle to getting that sex would be making sure you had four quart...
I know none of this seems very believable. It probably doesn't even make sense. But for once in your life, please, I am asking you to trust me. Trust yourself.
I was headed for an entire life spent alone, pitying myself for not being more, ignoring all those people who actually ask me to be more, because they see it in me.
This is what you have to ask yourself: Do you want to be good, or just seem good? Do you want to be good to yourself and others? Do you care about other people, always, sometimes, never? Or only when convenient? What kind of person do you want to be?
It's like all technology: either not powerful enough or too powerful. It will never do exactly what you want it to do.
On the worst days, I feel fine. On the best days, I know I am not.
I don't know how, or whether it is even possible to predict what the world will look like the next day. I simply have to close my eyes, and wait until tomorrow in order to find out.
